In no mood to spread the wealth

NBC lawyers are working around the clock to prevent millions of online publishers from "stealing" Olympic coverage and embedding it on unauthorized blogs, websites and social networking pages.

The network is also issuing takedown notices to video sharing sites like Veetle.com:

NBCOlympics.com has an exclusive contract to broadcast audiovisual (and highly-coveted) Olympics coverage online. Even Olympian athletes, which this year were given permission to blog by the International Olympics Committee, are forbidden to post visual or audio material from the Games.

Unfortunately for online-only spectators, events aired on NBCOlympics.com are not only closely-guarded — that is, users can't embed them elsewhere — but slightly delayed, making them "as stale as yesterday's bread," complains Silicon Alley Insider.

To help sate Olympic news seekers, Yahoo and Google partnered with NBC to provide updated Olympics statistics and information. Microsoft recently jumped in with Live Search, which now provides data like medal tallies, Olympian bios, news and links to NBC-hosted videos. One feature even ranks athletes by online popularity (based on the number of times their names were searched on Microsoft's engine).